The Concept

 

In 1989, Emerson Vice President for Finance and Administration Jim Vanderpol approached newly elected President John Zacharis with a bold idea--to beat the college's competitors in the emerging field of international education by starting a campus abroad. Vanderpol was from the Netherlands and was familiar with the country's governance and subsidy system. Zacharis liked the idea and by 1991, Vanderpol and Vice President for Extension Education Larry Conner had established a relationship with the Dutch Province of Limburg and its capital Maastricht (pop. about 100,000), the nation's oldest city.

 

The administrations of Limburg and Maastricht were eager to attract Emerson and they gave it a historic building in downtown Maastrictht for a symbolically small rent plus financial aid to Limburg residents who wished to attend it.

 

EIIC Emerson was born on Sept. 3, 1991.

 

It was a mini Emerson in the heart of Europe--not a semester-abroad program. Its students were sons and daughters of diplomats, businesspeople, industrialists and European citizens with an interest in Emerson's specialties. In addition to Emerson-Boston professors, EIIC faculty were from European universities of the region--the universities of Liege, Aachen, Amsterdam, Maastricht, etc.

 

EIIC's design was ambitious, imaginative yet practical and economical: Its library was deposited at the University of Limburg (now Maastricht) library and its foreign languages were taught by the neighboring Dutch national institute for foreign languages, which offered a huge selection of languages. 

 

Through the use of our own studios, computer labs and building facilities, our students soon began to make a difference in city life: They started Maastricht's only English language weekly, they distributed the news through teletext on local cable, they organized film festivals, seminars on media and politics, poetry readings and they fully participated as accredited journalists in the coverage of the 1991 Maastricht summit that changed the European Economic Community to the European Union. (See later section on this site.)

 

EIIC's academic strength was recognized in 1994, when our global marketing/advertising graduate program was accredited by the International Advertising Association, the first time an American institution had received such a distinction.

 

EIIC was an academic gem about two decades ahead of its time.....